


What the Cat Dragged In

by L_Moonshade



Series: Altered Realities [5]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_Moonshade/pseuds/L_Moonshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate and Methos get involved with yet another SHIELD op. One that could have big implications for the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Cat Dragged In

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to Raynbowz for the beta and advice.

"I gotta say, I like this look on you."

"Thank you," Methos purred. He was in an expensive suit, having put a touch of gray into his temples, as well as in a fake beard and moustache. We'd gone to Norway on Watcher business, but Methos had taken the opportunity to renew some contacts, one of whom had invited him to, of all things, a pet party. "Ready to go?"

"Almost." I 'shifted and let him pick me up so I could climb onto his shoulders. As Adam it was difficult for him to accommodate me, but as Michael Atherton, Methos didn't slouch, giving me plenty of space. Once I was settled, we left.

The party was at a mansion, one of those that, big as it was, you knew you were only seeing a fraction of it. We were met at the door by a butler and the scent of flowers; vases were strategically placed throughout the house. There was another scent underneath it, though, one that I should have known but couldn't quite place.

We were led into a large sitting room that opened onto a fenced-in yard. We weren't the first people there; aside from the host there were three women who looked to be in their mid-twenties. The man stood and offered his hand.

"Atherton. I expected you to bring a dog, like everyone else."

"Since when have you known me to be like everyone else? Especially since you didn't specify. Michael Atherton," Methos said, turning to charm the ladies.

Good thing I'm not a jealous woman, I thought as three dogs came racing in. Two of them were small dogs, a Chihuahua and Pomeranian. The third was a handsome German shepherd who obviously thought a bit too much of himself.

"Ooh a cat," the Pomeranian yapped up at me. "I love cats."

"Me, too. They're so much fun to chase," the Chihuahua said. "C'mon down here and play."

I swiped a tongue along a paw. "Bitches, please. I'm bigger than the two of you put together."

Methos sat and I moved to the back of the sofa before jumping to an empty chair. The two small dogs followed, yapping at me to quit being a coward and just, "come down here, already."

"Goldie, leave the nice kitty alone. I'm so afraid he'll hurt… What did you say his name was?" one of the women said.

"Her name is Mau. And I'd be more worried about her hurting your Goldie."

I sat on my haunches and looked down at the yappers. "I'm here. So who's being a scaredy cat?"

Both small dogs jumped and I reared back, smacking them down. They landed with a yelp and went running back to their mommies while the German shepherd laughed.

"No claws," he said, moving closer. "Good to know."

I spread my paw to clean between my toes and unsheathe my claws. "You were saying, Blondie?"

"You are a sneaky one, aren't you?"

I scoffed. "Feline."

The women shooed the dogs back into the yard and Methos reached over to scratch me behind an ear.

"Well. I think they've got worked out among themselves," he chuckled.

There was still one more dog, though, and I was concerned about the lord and master of the house.

"Kitty!" A Great Dane puppy raced in, barking in excitement. He came sliding to a stop in front of me, almost tripping over his own oversized feet. "Kitty! Wanna play?" he asked, moving closer to check me out, almost knocking me over backwards as he sniffed my belly.

"Easy, Kiddo, easy." I put a paw on his nose, using just enough pressure that he knew I wanted him to move back.

"Sorry," he said, falling onto his haunches and hanging his head. "My master wants me to be loud and scare people away. What's your name?"

"Mau. You?"

"My master calls me Boy."

I sighed. Another idiot who only wanted a watchdog and didn't know the proper way to go about it. "I refuse to call you Boy." I considered for a moment then came up with an answer. "Roland. Long, tall, and ugly."

"Oh," he said, looking dejected.

Fuck, now I felt like a heel. "It's an affectionate name, I promise."

And just like that, his hurt feelings were forgotten. "Oh. Thank you. I like you, too." He stood and turned to check out Methos. "I like him, he smells nice." He sneezed, almost falling over again. "He smells like the stick my master keeps downstairs."

Interesting. "Hmm. How so?"

"They both smell like lightning. It's really pretty, too; it glows. Do you want to see it?"

I stretched, feigning indifference. "If you like."

"It's this way," he said, turning to go farther into the house.

"I'm just going to let my human know; I'll catch you up."

I wasn't sure if he'd heard since he was already racing into the hall, but there was nothing else for it. I went back to Methos, glad to see he had something to eat, giving me a pretense. I jumped back over to the sofa then sauntered over to him, leaning down to rest my front paws on his shoulder.

"Yes, Dear, I love you, too," he said, voice dry. "She never seems to be too far when I have food." He did, however, pull a bit of meat off his sandwich and fed it to me. I ate it, annoyed at the mustard, as I told him I would be off exploring. The code we'd come up with wasn't involved enough for me to give him details, but I could at least let him know I wasn't in trouble. After I ate his offering I jumped to the floor and started cleaning. It didn't take long for the other humans in the room to forget about me and, when they did, I followed Roland.

He was waiting at the end of the hall at a door that wasn't latched shut. "My master gives me full run of the house," he told me, nosing the door open. "So I can protect it."

"Does he treat you well?"

Roland looked surprised by the question. "Sure. He feeds me and teaches me stuff."

"Stuff like what?" He moved slowly on the stairs, his big feet clumsy on the risers, but I was okay with the chance to talk.

"Like how to protect the house," he told me. "Attack people, stuff like that."

I hadn't been sure whether or not I'd like Mitchell, but that convinced me that I didn't. "All people?"

"No, just people who don't belong here."

"What about my human?"

Roland paused, not sure how to answer. "Well, he doesn't live here…"

And that's what I'd been afraid of. "Oh, Kiddo. You shouldn't attack anyone unless they attack you, first. Being invited isn't an attack."

"Oh," was all Roland said, but he looked thoughtful.

At the bottom of the stairs was a short hallway leading into a central room. I could see three more doors; through one a couple of guys in lab coats sat at a table, eating.

"It's in the room on the right," Roland told me. "They won't like you being there, so I'll go keep them busy."

And get some scraps, no doubt, I thought. "Go on ahead, then."

He galumphed into the other room, acting even a bit more clumsy than I'd seen so far. Well, well, not a stupid lug, then, for all he seemed slow. Roland was an appropriate name, indeed.

Once the lab monkeys had their attention on the pup, I slipped into the other room and jumped up onto the table. Roland was right, the scepter was pretty, and it did glow, the "jewel" shining with a blue light that looked like the gun I'd seen at ComiCon. Between that and the smell, there was no way it wasn't connected to the Tesseract. Now, I just had to figure out how to get it out of here.

A door opened and I jumped down, going to the doorway to hide behind the wall and watch. A large man headed for the hall, wiping bloody knuckles on a rag. A moment later I heard a "hey!" from the room Roland was in, then laughter. Roland came slinking out, looking proud of himself.

"I'm just so clumsy, I knocked their drinks over. They have to change clothes, now."

I could hear lockers and realized the break room was larger than what I'd seen. "Nicely done. Roland, can you get me into that other room?"

"Sure!" He trotted over and reached up to hit the door handle. The minute there was room I slipped in, heart skipping a beat when I saw a woman tied to the chair in the middle of the room, looking bloody and beat up, a SHIELD logo on her tac suit. She lifted her head and I saw that her eyes looked unfocused.

"Oh, hey, Kitty, this isn't a good place to be. You either, Boy. Gotta come up with a better name for you, you're too good a pup for this asshole."

"Oh, no, that's not good. That's not good at all." Roland's head whipped around at a sound from one of the other rooms. "We should go before we're caught. If they don't want me playing with that stick…"

"Point made." I gave the woman a glance, wishing I could tell her that she wasn't alone, that I'd be making sure Phil knew where she was. Then I took in the room so I could tell Phil what he was looking at.

"Get out of here before they find you," the woman said. "I've been hurt enough for all of us."

She looked it, too. I turned my attention to sneaking back upstairs and figuring out how to get Roland to realize who the good guys were.

Back in the sitting room I snuck in then made a show of coming out from under a chair. Methos smiled warmly when he saw me and reached down to scratch behind an ear.

"There you are. See? I told you she was just napping."

In the time Roland and I had been gone, someone had lit a fire against the cooling night and the other three dogs were hogging the space in front of it. I settled at the edge of the rug, curling my tail over my toes. "Move it, Blondie. You're in my spot."

The dogs laughed. "Who's going to make me?"

I was ready to goad them into an attack and give me a reason to rip them to shreds, but Roland stepped up behind me. "This is my house. Mau wants the fire, so you are going to move."

Blondie stood, hackles starting to rise. "You picked the wrong time to play Alpha, Pup."

Roland actually growled, but a fight was interrupted by one of the women. "Here, boy." The shepherd, of course, obeyed at once. "I think it's time for Blondie and I to go. Things seem to be getting a bit tense."

"We should go, too."

While the women were collecting their dogs, Roland and I curled up in front of the fireplace. "I can't believe his name's really Blondie."

"What's wrong with that?" Roland asked.

I huffed. "It was supposed to be an insult."

"Oh," he chuckled. His good humor didn't last long, though. "I know that woman downstairs. She and a man came here for help. She was nice; she got down on the floor to play with me. Later that night, the man broke a window. I barked, though, keeping him out, and my master came and took care of him. I didn't know the nice woman had gotten in."

A decoy, then, and Roland sounded so forlorn that I couldn't help but reassure him. "You're still just a pup—you've got a lot of learning to do—and she's just that good. She does stuff like this for a living." I paused to let him take that in, then broached the subject. "Roland, I don't know exactly what that stick is, but I do know that it's dangerous."

"Then what did the nice human want with it?"

"To keep it safe and out of the wrong hands. The people she works for, their job is to keep stuff like that out of the wrong hands."

He dropped his head to rest on me. "You're sure?"

"Two of the people I trust most in this world work for them; one of them is in charge. And the others trust them almost as much as I do."

He thought for a long moment then sighed. "I guess that means my master shouldn't have it?"

"I don't think so, Roland. I'm so sorry, Kiddo."

He lifted his head and gave me a nudge with his nose. "I'm just glad you came before I hurt someone I shouldn't." Then, flopping onto his side, "What about the nice woman downstairs? We can't just leave her there."

"I have a way to tell her friends where she is. I'll give them the information, then let them take care of it."

"How will I know it's them?" Then he wagged his tail. "I know. Tell them to call me Roland. We're the only ones who know that." Then his face fell. "But, I won't know what it sounds like when the humans say it."

Methos stood and stretched. "Well, we should probably get going home, too. Mau."

"I'll have my human say it to you," I told Roland, racing up the back of the sofa. Once on Methos' shoulders, I gave him the sign for litter box; not entirely original, but effective.

It may not have been entirely original, but it worked. "I could use the loo before I go."

"Down the hall, it's the door just under the stairs."

Once in the bathroom—little more than a cupboard and a bit cramped—I 'shifted. "Call the dog Roland, but don't let Mitchell hear," I said, speaking into his ear so I could keep my voice low.

"As long as you explain in the car," Methos said, then gave me a quick kiss. I 'shifted back, he waited a moment then washed his hands and put me back on his shoulders.

Mitchell had stepped into the hall, Roland close behind. "Get up on your hind legs to lick my human's face."

"Okay," Roland barked, excited. He did and Methos gave Roland his name, while Mitchell yelled at the dog to get down.

"I'm sorry about that," Mitchell said, glaring at Roland. "I don't know what got into him."

"That's okay," Methos said easily. "It's nice to be loved."

I didn't like the look on Mitchell's face and, to judge by the way Roland's tail hung straight down, neither did he. "I'll tell them to find you a better master, too," I told Roland. "I don't like the way this guy treats you."

"I don't either, anymore. Will I see you again?"

"I hope so."

I waited until we were on the road before 'shifting and digging out a cell phone. "I have to make a call, first."

It was, of course, answered on the first ring. "Coulson." His voice was bland as always, but I thought I could hear an underlying tension in it.

"I've seen your agent."

It was, I thought, a testament of how he'd come to trust me that Phil didn't ask any questions. "Talk to me."

"Carson Mitchell's estate. The scepter's there, too. Phil, I'd bet my whiskers it's tied in to the Tesseract."

"That's what we were afraid of. I'm looking at a plan of the house, where's Hill?"

"There's a door at the end of the main hall on the left with stairs that lead down to a short hall and a larger room with three doors, left, right, and straight ahead. The room ahead is a break and locker room. When I saw the scepter it was on the right; your agent's on the left. She was beat up pretty bad and probably has a concussion, but she was mostly lucid. There's a dog, a Great Dane puppy, call him Roland and he'll let you do what you have to. Hell, he'll probably help. Get him out too, would you?"

"Well, you don't ask for much."

I huffed. "And if you have to shoot Mitchell, give him a bullet for me, would you? I don't like guys who hit animals."

"Fine, but you're finding a home for him."

I grinned. "Already done. Let us know how it goes?"

"Promise. And Kate? Thank you."

"Anytime."

When I was done, Methos glanced at me. "Well, that's the summary. Now, how about the details? And you're not thinking about taking the dog in, are you?"

"Not at all, promise." The rest of the night was spent filling him in.

Forty-eight hours later, Phil called to let us know that Hill was recovering well, with three cracked ribs and a concussion, but nothing permanent, and Roland was being checked over by the vets to make certain there was nothing keeping him from going into a private home. And so he could be spoiled by the SHIELD agents, I figured, but I didn't call Phil on it. I went to sleep that night glad everything had worked out.

If only I'd known.


End file.
